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Tuesday, 4 April 2017

1987: Pakistan Won The Unbelievable Test Mach In Bangalore

Before three decades in March 1987 Pakistan snatched the victory from Indian cricket team and that too on their home soil. Having the advantage of home ground and their own umpires' negative umpiring India could not stop Pakistan to win the historic match as well as their first ever test series victory in India and that was one of the best victories in Pakistan cricket history.

The first idea of neutral umpires was given in that series but India straightforwardly refused to get the match supervised by neutral umpires.

In that era the world champion Indian team was regarded as almost unbeatable side at home. However when Pakistan team arrived to play test match consists of 5 test matches, the first 4 test matches ended with no result having heavy scores in each match.

In 13 march 1987 on spin track the skipper Imran Khan won the toss and elected to bat first and the whole Pakistan team got all out on 116 owing to the incredible bowling performance by Manindar Singh taking 7 wickets.

Saleem Malik was the top scorer with 33 runs and Tauseef Ahmed and Iqbal Qasim scored extremely vital 18 runs for the last wicket partnership.

In reply the Indian team looked solid, at one stage they were 102 runs loss of 4 wickets. Imran Khan and company were well aware of the situation and the kept fighting and did not lose the hope and they performed well through the fielding and bowling. Pakistan restricted the Indian team to only 145 runs with the lead of 29 due to the great bowling performance by Tauseef Ahmed and Iqbal Qasim with 5 wickets each.

After lunch on second day Javed Miandad and Rameez Raja opened the inning for Pakistan. That was the second opportunity for Javed to open the inning for his side before that Javed had also opened the inning at Lords in 1982 and Pakistan remained victorious in that match as well.

Pakistan openers had added very vital 45 runs before Javed Miandad got out on 17 runs. Despite the negative slogans from the crowed and unnecessary appeals from host players Pakistan fought hard with the exceptional concentration. Saleem Malik along with Rameez Raja added valuable 32 runs for the third wicket and scored the same 32 runs along with night watchman Iqbal Qasim and they continue to score runs for their side. When second day's play ended Pakistan were 155 for 5 with the lead of 126 runs.

At last Pakistan's inning came to an end on 249 runs and wicket keeper saleem Yousuf remained unbeatable crucial 41 runs along with the partnership of 51 runs for the 9th wicket with Tuaseef and brought Pakistan into a very strong position. Manindar Singh again bowled well and had 3 wickets in second inning taking 10 wickets in a match.

In order to chase 221 runs the greatest batsman of all time for India Sunil Gavaskar along with Srikanth opened the inning for his side. When India's score was 15 Srikanth and Mahidar Amarnath got out on two consecutive deliveries of Waseem Akram. On that stage Indian team seemed to be got out early but Sunil Gavaskar controlled the situation and took the resposibilty on his shoulders. At the end of third day's play India were 99 runs loss of 4 wickets due to Gavaskar's significant batting performance.

16 March was the rest day and Pakistani spinners Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed preferred to take handsome amount of rest. On 4th day Iqbal Qasim tried not to bowl turn a lot by doing this he got the reward and got Azhar-Ud-Din and Ravi Shastri out cheaply when India were 155 runs loss of 6 wickets.

After adding 6 runs Kapil Dave also got out. At the other end Sunil Gavaskar was caught by Rizwan-Uz-Zamman but umpire gave him a new life by not giving him out. But he again gave the catch to Rizwan on the bowling of Iqbal in the slip region and unfortunately the great batsman failed to complete his 35th test century in his very last test match who had become the first batsman in the history of test matches to score 10000 runs.

Tauseef Ahmed cleared the way for Pakistan to win that historic match by getting Shivlal out but when India were on 192 runs loss of 9 wickets Tauseef was hit a long six by Bani which made the crowed jubilant and created some sort of hope for the host nation to win.

That was incredibly tense moment but Tauseef Ahmed had already dealt with this kind of situation 11 months ago in Sharjah when he was given the difficult responsibility to give Javed Miandad strike on 5th bowl of the very last over of the match. He went through the situation quite successfully and saw Miandad hitting the historic unforgettably unbelievable six runs to get over the line. Javed Miandad famous last ball six

India were moving slowly and gradually towards the target but Tauseef Ahmed bowled the faster one to get Bani caught. In this way Pakistan beat India and won match by 16 runs as well as the 5 test match series 1 - 0. This was the very first time that Pakistan won the test series against India in India.

Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed together took 9 wickets in the match and Sunil Gavaskar was controversially given the man of the match award despite that fact his inning could not get India home.